HP TouchPad fire sale more smoke than fire

HP launched one final liquidation sale on their discontinued HP TouchPad Sunday night to try and meet the incredible demand that the tablet generated from the original sale in August. But despite the bargain-basement pricing, many were still left unsatisfied.

HP announced late last week that they would be offering the TouchPad to US customers one last time. The sale took place on December 11 at 7pm Eastern time through HP’s eBay store. The WebOS-equipped tablets sold for $99 and $149 for 16GB and 32GB models, respectively.

There were, however, a few catches this time around. First, all of the units that HP put up for sale were refurbished models. Second, HP only offered 2,316 16GB units and 5,534 of the larger 32GB tablets during the sale, or less than 8,000 total. According to reports, these were all sold in less than 25 minutes. As a result, eBay and Paypal were sluggish and littered with error messages and failed transactions.

If that wasn’t enough to irritate buyers, HP charged a flat shipping fee of $19 per order – that’s 20 percent of the selling price of the 16GB model. It seems that trying to make a few extra bucks on shipping may have backfired as HP’s seller rating on eBay now sits at 93.5 percent with 60 negative and 13 neutral feedback ratings in the last month. Nearly every negative comment on the first several pages is in relation to shipping charges.